Sharia Glamour
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Taliban ban beauty saloons from operating in Afghanistan citing the massive cost involved when women go for beauty treatments
The Taliban has issued a one-month closure notice to all beauty salons in Afghanistan, as the Islamist group continues to bring all areas of life in the country in line with its strict interpretation of Islam.
“The deadline for the closing of beauty parlours for women is one month,” a spokesperson for the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Propagation of Virtue, Mohammad Sadiq Akif, told Reuters on Tuesday.
The directive, dated June 24, was reportedly “based on verbal instruction from the supreme leader” Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, but authorities did not explain the exact reasoning. The spokesman told AFP that “once they are closed then we will share the reason with the media.”
The Taliban’s Virtue and Vice Ministry said on Thursday, “Eyebrow shaping, the use of other people’s hair, and make-up interferes with the ablutions required before prayers,” as justification of a controversial move to shut down women’s beauty salons across Afghanistan.
Moreover, it is customary that the cost of pre-wedding salon visits by the bride and her female family members is to be borne by the groom’s family, which causes additional economic stress, the morality ministry’s spokesman, Sadiq Akif Mahjer, argued, according to AP.
While the move has drawn criticism from human rights defenders, the Taliban claims that the government has taken all necessary steps for the “betterment” of women’s lives in Afghanistan to “provide them with a comfortable and prosperous life according to the Islamic Shariah.”
“Under the rule of the Islamic Emirate, concrete measures have been taken to save women from many traditional oppressions, including forced marriages, and their Shariah rights have been protected,” the supreme leader of the Taliban, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada,said.
Since seizing control of Afghanistan amid the botched withdrawal of US forces in August 2021, the Islamist group has been bringing all areas of life in the country in line with its strict interpretation of Islam. The Taliban has imposed severe restrictions prohibiting girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade, barring women from various jobs and public spaces such as parks and gyms. Women are required to cover their faces in public and have a male chaperon for long trips.
The Taliban has also cracked down on press freedom, banning multiple Western outlets including the US government-controlled Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), as well as some programming by German state-sponsored broadcaster Deutsche Welle and the BBC, citing their alleged bias.
Among its less controversial restrictions, the Taliban has outlawed the cultivation of poppy and has reportedly accomplished in one year what America’s global ‘war on drugs’ has failed to pull off in several decades. The UK Telegraph newspaper called the move “the most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history,” after poppy production dropped by an estimated 80% in the past year.
Source Reuters/AP/BBC/Telegraph/RT
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